


Once in a blue moon

by WhatHaveWeDone



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23156785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatHaveWeDone/pseuds/WhatHaveWeDone
Summary: please, someone, why can I not write anything else! A little John and Virgil together. Now with chapter 2 wohoo!
Comments: 3
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

It was an aligning of the planets when John and Virgil got to work together. That is to say: not as seldom as everybody thought, but not  everyday either. It just depended how you defined 'together’, for technically John worked every dispatch. They were a great pairing: Virgil’s mechanical skills and John’s electronic ones meant there wasn’t much they couldn’t engineer their way out of. 

They’d already tackled several problems at the overloading factory: Virgil had used a bit of brute force and the proper application of leverage to open a cooling vent for access, and John had whipped up an antivirus program in his short but brutal plummet to Earth. They security doors had been no match for Virgil’s jaws of life – something that he would have to have a word with the owners about, it shouldn’t be this easy – and they made swift progress to the control room. 

That’s where it all went wrong. 

“You uploaded you’re cure yet?” asked Virgil, raising an arm to shield his face from the sparking controls. It was  _ not good  _ when a display panel did that; it meant things were getting way out of hand, as if the warning lights didn’t already make that clear. Virgil had really grown to hate flashing red lights. 

“It’s not a cure,” John said with a very clearly heard verbal eyeroll, “and you know that so are just saying it to wind me up.” Virgil did know that. There was some sort of malevolent trojan horse virus in the system that John was going to contain and eradicate, but surely ‘cure’ was an acceptable shortcut. John was hunched over, giving the terminal he was working at an intent frown. Virgil didn’t like that frown. It was a ‘something’s gone wrong’ type of frown.

“Problem?”

John pushed himself to his feet with a sigh of frustration. “Sort of. My  programme is uploaded and is working it’s way through the system architecture and once it’s done facility operation will return to normal.”

“I sense a ‘but’ looming in my future.”

“ _But_ _....._ to complete that we will need to do a full system restart.”

“Off and on again.”

John nodded and Virgil felt his stomach sink. This was a manufacturing plant for high value, high strength biodegradable plastics which were in very high demand in a number of secondary industries. The process to create a reliable and durable product was complicated and long and relied upon down to the second timing in some stages, otherwise whole batches could be lost. These places were designed to resist total system shut down as that would the cost the company millions in clean up on  it’s own, let alone lost contracts and waste. This was a true  twenty four seven operation with  back ups and contingencies to keep it running at all times. 

Of course some of those would be off line at the moment as a result of the virus that was screwing up the temperature controls on the main furnace, threatening to send it’s unstable contents into a spontaneous combustion that would flatten half for the surrounding city. But not all of them.

“Is that even possible?” Virgil asked.

“Yes, if I had three quarters of an hour and a bit of  luck I might be able to trick the remaining safe guards that the others were still in place, get them to shut down in a controlled cascade.” John said grimly.

Virgil gave a quick glance at the readouts – needles quivering at their max, bar charts at their limits and those damned red lights suggested that wasn’t an option. “We don’t have that long,” Virgil said “We have about ten minutes before it goes critical. What are our other options?” There were always other options. International Rescue didn’t give up. 

“There might be another way” John said with a strange hesitation. “But it’s a bit more …. errr …. rough and ready, shall we say. You’re not going to like it.”

“If that’s what we’ve got,  lets get on with it!” Virgil knew they had no time to waste.

John pointed him to one of the panels on the far side of the room. “I need you to take out all of the capacitors on that board, one at a time, from left to right. And I need to borrow a wrench.” 

Virgil fished out his second  favourite wrench and handed it over, turning smartly on his heel to set about his task. John pressed a few buttons on the main console before popping open another section of the room’s wall. Virgil clicked open his own, now as far away from John as he could be in the small space, and stared in puzzlement for a second. He wasn’t the computer genius that his brother was, but he knew what a capacitor looked like and whatever was running through this wall didn’t have any. It wasn’t like John to make such a mistake even under this much pressure. He turned to double check when a lot of things happened at once. 

He saw John reaching into the guts of the wall and hitting something really hard with the wrench. What followed was the predictable blinding flash of an overload due to damage and contact with metal, the snap of discharging electricity like static from a balloon but a  thousand fold . The lights went out, there was a dull ‘thump’ of a large weight on a hard surface and a clang as the wrench fell to the floor.

Virgil stood, stiff and dumbfounded. His eyes, still troubled by the flash were struggling to  accustomise themselves to the pitch dark. Spots were floating across his vision and the hair on the back of his neck stood up in a sixth-sense sort of alarm. 

“John?” He whispered “What the actual hell.”

He turned on his trusty shoulder flashlight and swept it around the room. The place where John had been standing was filled with smoke which smelt cloying and metallic as it drifted through the room. Another sweep found what he was looking for – crumbled against the wall just a few paces away was his stupid stupid stupid brother. 

“God damn it John!” Virgil said as he knelt at his side. Through the thin beam of light Virgil could see the slight fuzz to his hair and scorch marks on his suit that spoke of a large electrical discharge. Virgil pushed a furious two fingers to the pulse point just under the jaw and offered a silent prayer of thanks to anything in a position to hear when he felt the heartbeat - fast, uneven, but there.

“John, John!” Virgil shook his shoulder.

“No need to shout.” John replied, voice much softer than his usual commanding tones.

“ Oh there is plenty of reason to shout. Being as I think you just stuck your hand into the primary back up power system to overload it and shut the factory down. That's what you did, right?”

“Basically.” Virgil focused the light on John’s face to see it pinched, pale and squinting. He tried to bring up the suit’s biometrics but it wasn’t fully responsive, and it took a lot to damage Brains’ tech. “How long has everything been off?”

“Under a minute. You and I are going to have a conversation about ‘rough and ready’ and hitting complex electric systems with god damn metal rods and getting yourself god damn electrocuted.” 

“I’m fine.” John protested.

“Really? Because I think you just got thrown across the room into a concrete wall. I also think you just got hit with about a billion volts of electricity. Now I’m not sure one of those made you lose consciousness, but I know which one is making your heartrate too fast. I’m also worried that I can feel occasional irregular heartbeats and I so don’t want to have to put a de-fib on you because I have no idea what sort of internal injuries you have right now.” Virgil was trying not to let his anger out and to stay professional but John sure did deserve it. Hitting it with a bloody wrench!

“If you’re finished, want to help me get up so we can get this place back up and running and go home?” John said, making no move to get up himself.

“That depends, do you think you’ve got any internal bleeding?” Virgil made a couple of physical checks that John bore with bad grace - unfortunately they were all familiar with the feeling of internal bleeding.

John gave a grimace and a shake of his head “Nah, only bruised.”

Virgil gave a put-upon sigh and man-handled John to his feet, taking most of his weight with an arm slung over his shoulder and Virgil holding John tightly to his hip. The quicker they did this, the quicker he could get John back for a CAT scan and an  xray and an ECG. 

They staggered to the main terminal where John flicked a few switches and pumped a breaker – with a whine and a whir something started up: lights and screens flickered on all around them, straining his eyes yet again.

“Please don’t do anything like that again.” Virgil pleaded as they waited for the main frame to reboot, “It was really stupid and you could have at least given me warning.”

“You would have tried to stop me.” John said, leaning his head against Virgil and closing his eye for just a second. “I didn’t want to do it, but -  “ he paused for a few moments as he studied the booting sequence and obviously happy with what he saw there - “Mission accomplished, city saved.”

“Yeah, too right I would have tried to stop you almost killing yourself.” Virgil said, turning them slowly and starting to make their way back to his Thunderbird. Luckily they landed  just outside the door so he wouldn’t have to carry John too far – he was heavier than he looked. “As it is, you might have wished you had when Scott gets hold of you.”

John groaned, long and drawn out. After a side-eyed glance at his  brother - pale, in obvious pain and listing to one side even with his support - Virgil wasn’t convinced that noise could all be attributed to the thought of the dressing down he was going to get as soon as he was well enough to stand it. 

“Do you think we could just not tell him?”

“Not a chance.”

“He’s not going to understand.”

“Oh we understand- ” Virgil said, wanting to  emphasise that Scott wouldn’t be the only one to have a problem with John’s antics, even as he was pushing his brother into one of Two’s med beds. “-considering the number of lives at risk. But making a decision like that without having a conversation with the rest of us – it's just not on. How would you feel if we did it while you were up on  Five. ”

John was clenching his jaw as Virgil raised the bed so he was leaning back instead of  laying flat, but whether from a hidden injury or the memory of all the times John had watched them run head first into trouble without being able to do anything about it was impossible to say. 

Suppressing a groan of his own Virgil headed to the cockpit for  take off protocols. If everyone was being their usual selves Scott would be blazingly angry by the time they got back to the island and John would retreat into intractable silence and somehow it would all be Virgil’s fault.

Virgil was almost glad he worked with his brother just once in a blue moon. 


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t that they were bad patients but...

Ok, what you have to understand is that the day job wasn’t one that they just stopped when there was a bruise, a burn or even a broken bone. If they were injured on a mission but were still able to walk they got the people out, got themselves out and got patched up later.

Unfortunately this carried over to when they were safe at home and there wasn’t a one of them that hadn’t hobbled around early enough that if they had gone to an actual hospital a nurse would have tackled them back into bed. It usually took a constant and hypocritical rota of nagging to get anyone to rest for even as close to as long as they should do.

Ok, so they were bad patients. 

Scott didn’t yell, but he did glare as he watched Vigil help John down the ramp from Two, having been given the brush off on their flight back as to what exactly happened. It melted away when he realised that John wasn’t protesting at the way Vigil eased him through the facility to the nearby med room. John hardly said a word as was helped out of his – obviously damaged – protective suit, subjected to a range of scans and dosed up with one of the strongest painkillers they had. John didn’t like the light headed feeling that often accompanied the drugs, preferring to spend any time that he was signed off reading, coding or planning improvements to Five. He didn’t lie back like this: still and silent between the xray and the bandages, between his concerned brothers.

“What the hell happened?” Scott hissed.

“I’m fine, just had a small electric shock.” John muttered, closing his eyes with a sigh. 

“Small electric shocks do not short out our equipment like that – your suit is completely fried.” Scott’s stomach was twisting still. It was often like this. He was getting an ulcer after this week for sure.

“Tell him it’s fine, Virgil.”

“Virgil will do no such thing.” Virgil crossed his arms for emphasis. “You caught the blowback of shorting out half the factory’s systems.”

“He did what? And you didn’t stop him?” Scott asked Virgil, earning himself a questioning glare. Virgil had been there after all: he was meant to be the responsible one.

“If I'd had the chance I would have. Look Scott, can we leave this until later. You’ll get the full report.” Virgil gave a heavy sigh. “John needs some sleep.”

“I don’t need sleep” John muttered, halfway gone already.

“If you don’t need sleep then you can tell me -” Scott said, his fear making him harsh, “- why you landed yourself in a med bed?”

“Because he doesn’t bloody communicate.” Virgil said, throwing down a towel he had been using to wipe down his own grimy face. 

“Course I do, that’s my  _ job.”  _ John protested. 

“There wasn’t much of that today was there? The thing is when  _ we’re  _ on a call you know what we’re doing every second. We have no idea what you’re doing and to an extent it doesn’t matter because you give us what we need exactly when we need it. And when you’re out with us you are still in that mindset of doing your own thing and telling us later if you think we need to know about it.” Virgil was in full flow now, having had time to mull it over on the flight back. “Today we were short on time it’s true but if I’d had a little warning we could have come up with something else. Or maybe avoided this.” He gestured to the bed, the med room, the ECG machine.

Scott took that in. When was the last time that he had asked John what he was up to when he was in the middle of a dispatch? Had he ever? He just sort of assumed that John was doing what he needed to and if Scott was honest with himself sometimes he didn’t want to know too much detail – they were meant to be staying on the right side of the law after all. He was mostly left to his own devices which was mostly fine. Mostly.

Except that formed habits, and habits were hard to break. Habits that resulted in flinging Five into the path or an errant comet to rescue one stubborn commander of a space station, or walking on the suspension cables barely holding a charity auction up over a thousand feet drop. Both of those turned out fine, but sure had put Scott’s heart in his throat when he’d found out what had happened, and he would have certainly had some ideas if he’d been asked at the time.

“That’s not... that’s not fair.” John muttered.

“What’s not fair is purposely putting your life on the line when I was standing right next to you. I don’t want to carry you out next time.”

“Was it really that bad?” Scott asked softly.

“Scared the heck out of me. One minute he fine, next it was dark and was I working out if I had to do CPR.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

John forced his eyes open to lock his gaze to Virgil’s. “I’m sorry” he said, with a pained sincerity. 

“I’m not looking for you to apologise John, I’m looking for you to not do it again.” Virgil huffed. 

“You want me to ask permission?” John managed to sound both incredulous, scathing and like he was about to pass out at the same time.

“It’s not about asking permission and you know it. I just want you to think a bit before you do something drastic.”

“Don’t come to me talking about drastic. I know what you get up to. What doesn’t go in the reports. I’m always  _ watching  _ remember. How’s it  feel to be on the other side?”

It didn’t feel good and Scott broke the slightly unfocussed eye contact John was maintaining to exchange a guilty glance with Virgil. 

“Maybe we need to leave this for another day. And get everyone in on this.” 

Virgil raised an eyebrow in surprise at Scott’s retreat. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. I’ll admit there have been a few calls that were closer than I would have liked in the last few months. And if it happened to me, it’s happened to the rest of you as well.” Virgil didn’t say anything, but he didn’t deny it which spoke volumes. “Impulsive  behaviour almost got John killed today, so  lets re-establish a few ground rules.”  _ Before there is less ‘almost’ in that sentence.  _

Virgil nodded, probably reluctant to have his own escapades revealed to the rest of the family. It wasn’t a conversation Scott was looking forward to having: a room full of hot headed, confident and fearless young people who were going to get on the defensive right away could make saying anything tough. But Scott was going to take the opportunity of having everyone in the same place to hash this out: John wouldn’t be leaving the planet in a hurry.

“Anything else you need John?”

“Not to be lectured any more.”

“Of course. I’ll save that for when you’re feeling better. Get some rest, we’ll be checking in on you.” Scott gave his hand a gentle squeeze as Virgil dimmed the lights. John’s breaths evened out as they made for the door: he must have been fighting sleep since he arrived to be able to drift off so quickly. 

Scott took one last look before he pulled the door gently shut. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been able to watch John sleep – peacefully, in person –  _ not  _ as a result of injury or enforced down time. I would be nice to have him around the house for a few days and maybe Scott could  stretch it out; get a big blow out family dinner in, some additional training, maybe even a movie night.

Scott was making a long list. After all  opportunities like this only came along once in a blue moon. 


End file.
